Shift by Raine Thomas

her mouth with every intent of kissing her until she knew unequivocally how he felt about her.
    A knock on the door shattered the moment.
    “Quincy?”
    Tate’s muffled question came from the other side of the door just as she opened it to let herself in, something she had always done. Quincy took a step away from Sophia, who moved just as quickly in the other direction. Then they both turned guilty gazes to Tate, who studied them with raised eyebrows as she breezed into the room, followed by Zachariah.
    “Oh,” she said. “What did I interrupt?”
    “Nothing,” Quincy and Sophia replied at the same time.
    Tate’s grin went wide as she easily read the lie in their words. “Hey, that’s great,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I interrupted nothing.”

Chapter 7
     
     
    “No,” Zachariah said. “You have the formula completely wrong. We already went over this.”
    Sophia used a towel to wipe perspiration from her face and neck as Zachariah scratched through the notes she had just made and began adding his own. Her flush was due more to embarrassment over failing to pay proper attention to him than it did the amount of heat in the room.
    She hadn’t slept much last night after leaving Quincy’s cottage. Her mind had been filled with the memory of the intensity of his silver eyes as he leaned toward her. Had he been about to kiss her? Why would he do that when he didn’t even like her?
    But did he like her? Did he possibly—she was kidding herself for even dreaming it—even more than like her?
    No, she had mostly convinced herself. She still remembered how adamantly he told Tate that he didn’t think Sophia was pretty just a few weeks ago. Her appearance hadn’t changed in five years and wouldn’t ever change again, so he couldn’t possibly be attracted to her.
    So what had last night’s interaction been all about?
    “I’m sorry,” she said now, carefully avoiding Tate’s knowing gaze from where she sat in the lab’s window seat sketching on some parchment. “You’re right. Let’s take it from where we left off with the plasma proteins.”
    Zachariah ran a hand through his already wild hair, a sure sign he was aggravated. “There are at least a thousand plasma proteins, and I said before that although Nyx’s toxin enters the bloodstream, it really only has its impact when reaching the nerve endings.”
    Sophia nodded and pulled at her bottom lip in consideration. Then she said, “We know the antitoxin worked for Tate even though you designed it to work on you. Therefore, the genetic differences in a full and part-Estilorian’s blood appear to be negligible when accounting for how Nyx’s toxin interacts with it.”
    “We need to know more about the differences between human and Estilorian blood in order to know why the antitoxin I created worked for both of us,” Zachariah pointed out. “I have never studied human anatomy.”
    Sophia stiffened. “Well, I have. We’ve mapped the stages at which it affected the eosinophils—”
    “Quincy!” Tate suddenly called out. She had stood up on the window seat and called down toward the courtyard from the high open window. “We need you!”
    “Tate!” Sophia gasped. “What are you doing?”
    “Get down, you demented female,” Zachariah said irritably. He walked over to the window seat and gripped Tate around the waist, lifting her as though she weighed nothing and returning her to the ground.
    Ignoring him, Tate said to Sophia, “Do you need Quincy to make this go easier?”
    Sophia opened her mouth to snap out a “no,” only to consider her cousin’s ability to tell when someone was lying. Pursing her lips, she lifted her chin in curt acknowledgment of Tate’s point and then glanced surreptitiously at her reflection in the mirrored surface of her triple beam balance. Her cheeks were flushed and damp tendrils of hair stuck to her temples. She was what Tate would call a hot mess.
    Her shoulders slumped in defeat. Here she